So, lightning strikes twice. Yesterday I steamed over the 50,000 word threshold and officially won NaNoWriMo 2011, with my new science fiction novel Colonisation. You know, the one from earlier.
I’m feeling a little melancholy to be honest. Here’s my reflection on how November shaped up for me this year, which my second – possibly more difficult – novel was borne.
I was offline for most of the month – which, at first glance, might’ve helped me to get a healthy word count going quickly. It did to a degree, but conversely I was writing a science fiction novel and, with no access to the internet, I wasn’t able to research any passing facts. Yeah, I've found that writing by the seat of my trousers (that is, with virtually no planning) is something I enjoy and I can work with. But without any references for facts or ideas to verify they actually flew, I found myself a little constrained.
Reading helps – I’ve been doing my utmost recently to read more, which is considerably easier when I read on my Kindle. I found myself learning new ways of writing, from when I went from a reading session to a writing session. Definitely, if I want to pursue fiction writing in any more of a serious capacity, I have to read more. Reading on the Kindle was awesome. I’ll talk about that more in a later blog post, but it’s right what that say. To be a reader will make you a better writer.
I felt constrained by the apparently rigid structure to which I was writing – in that when I was writing dialog, I was troubled yet again by my finicky attention to detail, which is great in setting a vivid scene, but a pain in the arse when it’s almost stopping you from writing what you want because you feel, rightly or wrongly, that you’re “not writing it right” in terms of grammar and sentence structure. This is something that reading will help me with; I’ll learn different ways to structure my work, and hopefully not feel so bound by the chains and grapples of not structuring phrases right in terms of punctuation, spelling or both.
I wrote in solitary confinement without fail – this a great shame. Writing is, by definition, a single person act. One person writes a certain thing at a time. But being blocked from the Internet and anyone else, I did feel a bit lonely, with only my characters for company. It put a downer on some writing sessions and, having come back online near the end of the month, made me want to participate more in the social aspect next year.
My ending was a mess – near the end, when I was at 47,000 words or so, I had so much I still wanted to do, so I felt I had to cram it in to succeed in that last mad race to 50,000. I know that’s silly, because there’s nothing stopping me going over 50,000 in Nanowrimo. Heck, some people even managed 155,000! But, as with Steamers, I also was unsure how to end, so went for the similar tact of writing some wishy-washiy ending where my characters suddenly have great philosophical dawnings in their minds, and how the opportunity, now the story was over, was there for them to do great, but vague things on some gigantic macro level. I’m again feeling my ending was crap. It’ll be good to rewrite it when the time comes, as, even though it got me to 50,000, I was totally out of steam and just wrote some old tat. It just doesn’t sit well with me and I feel underwhelmed by it. Which is a shame, as both Colonisation and Steamers have potential as great stories.
It’s not all bad though, as my list might suggest. I did learn some things though. Colonisation and The Last of the Steamers are two completely different beasts. Writing Colonisation had an entirely different “feel” to Steamers, and that’s good. Maybe it was the different setting, different feel of how the story went, and maybe because it was pure sci-fi and not alternate history/steampunk. Both are awesome. I also feel I learned from my error in Steamers and consciously set chapters. The fact I have no chapters in Steamers is a big turn off and contributes to my almost dread of working on it, even though the story is one I adore in my mind. It’s one turgid lump of text – how unapproachable! That was the immediate lesson I learned.
Would I do this again next year? Certainly! Every time I do this I’m learning something new, and it’s a lot of fun! I can only hope that I can get you lovely readers some more tangible stuff to show for this project this time. I plan to have Colonisation out in the first half of 2012 for sure. Steamers hasn’t been forgotten, but I want to be mentally ready and feel I’m almost experienced enough to give it the crafting it deserves.
The more I write, the more I learn. Time to work on those short stories! One decision I’ve made now after doing this for two years is that, yes, I want to be a writer. A proper, proper writer, who actually publishes stuff.
I’ll leave you with this year’s word count chart, which you can click to see in full size. Tracking my stats was almost as fun as the novel writing itself!
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